


Welcome To The Bliss

by Littlebiscuits



Category: Far Cry 5
Genre: Drugs, Faith tries really hard, Gen, Humor, reliable narrator, the Bliss is confusing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-22
Updated: 2018-10-22
Packaged: 2019-08-05 19:34:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16373729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Littlebiscuits/pseuds/Littlebiscuits
Summary: Stay away from the white flowers, Dutch had been very insistent about that. He'd told Rook someone could lose their mind to them, and would happily walk off a cliff if Faith asked them to.





	Welcome To The Bliss

Stay away from the white flowers, Dutch had been very insistent about that. He'd told Rook someone could lose their mind to them, and would happily walk off a cliff if Faith asked them to.

The warnings hadn't just come from him. They'd come from the Sheriff, and Grace, and Dr Lindsey as well. The Bliss made you hallucinate, made you euphoric, made you susceptible to suggestion and ready to worship whatever Joseph put in front of you. It was the perfect tool of control, and if you couldn't be controlled, it could be pumped into you until your own mind tore itself apart. Rook hadn't doubted it for a minute, he'd seen the angels, he'd seen the baptisms, the crazed animals, the people out of their mind and talking to things that weren't there.

Faith's region is full of the stuff, rows upon rows of those white flowers, swaying in the breeze, planted near the roads, and the rivers, so you couldn't travel anywhere without seeing them.

Rook has been extra careful since he hit Faith's territory, skirting the edges of those planted fields, spending as little time as possible in green-tinted water, watching out for animals that clearly had too much of it in their system. 'It doesn't have to be a high dose,' Dutch had grumbled, and Rook's natural paranoia had done the rest.

He'd been doing a great job avoiding the stuff so far, until he rounds the bend of a river, waving pollen away from his face, because the wind never seems to be on his side in this damn county. He comes face to face with Faith Seed, and she blows what looks like a handful of pollen, or ground up dehydrated flowers, or magical sparkles for all Rook fucking knows, _straight in his face_.

"Welcome to the Bliss," Faith says, all smiles and big eyes.

Rook rubs at his face, swearing and coughing, ready to grab at Faith, because she's tiny, and unarmed, and if he gets a hand on her then she's not getting away.

Only she's not treating him like a threat any more. She's sort of skipping around on bare feet, laughing at nothing, and coaxing Rook to come forward with gentle tugs of her fingers. Waving her hands occasionally like there are imaginary butterflies everywhere, and one of them might settle on her. It's kind of funny, in some ridiculous way, and Rook has to wonder if that's Faith's thing, if she's just constantly on her own flowers. Rook doesn't feel any different yet, even though he'd accidentally inhaled most of it, he still has pollen all over him, and his eyes still feel dry and faintly gritty. 

But he's seen how it starts, he's seen the dizziness, and the laughter, the urge to be led off at the first coaxing hand, and he also knows that the first symptoms happen almost immediately, if people even stray a little too close to it, or wade through the bliss-filled water. 

Shouldn't it have affected him by now?

Faith carefully lifts her dress, takes slow steps like she's wading through a stream that isn't there. When she reaches what seems to be the other side, she laughs and shakes her dress, as if to free imaginary droplets of water, then spins in a circle, looking over her shoulder to see if he's following. Rook suspects she's trying to lead him towards the fields of Bliss. She's as sober as he is, and she's trying to lead him, trying to manipulate what he's seeing, what he believes to be real.

She's expecting him to be high, to be all the way under the influence and ready to trail at her heels. Rook realises very quickly that it might be a good idea to let her keep thinking exactly that. That this might be something he can use. So he stretches a hand out, tries to look trusting, tries to look compliant. He lets her grasp his fingers, pull him along, and she smiles and laughs, like that's exactly what she wanted.

Rook has seen enough people under the Bliss that he thinks he knows what it's supposed to look like by now. He walks slowly, and makes a valiant attempt to get distracted by things that aren't there, though he's a little worried it just looks like he's wondering if he left the oven on.

Faith explains that she's not really the manipulative monster that the county makes her out to be, while carefully weaving Rook through enough Bliss fields to make sure he'd probably immediately fail any chemical poisoning tests. While she stays at the edges, holding her breath against the excited puffs of pollen. While she guides him with smiles and laughter, deeper into her territory. 

She talks about Joseph, with the same fervent, half-mad enthusiasm that John uses when he talks about the power of yes. She's definitely all in on Joseph's vision of fire and destruction, and she really wants Rook to join up, or, more likely, Joseph wants her to convince Rook to join up. When she calls Joseph 'the Father' she turns Rook, gently, to face Joseph's ugly statue, towering in the distance. All cheap concrete and slightly constipated expression. 

"Do you see him?" she asks. Though it's more of a push than a question. "He's always watching, he's always with us." She leans up his back. "You'll see him here with us, when you're ready."

Faith uses her hands to tip his head back, makes him look up at the blue of the sky, and then coaxes him up onto a flat rock, before easing his head back down. She releases him with a flourish, looking around and laughing, like something amazing just happened. Like he's been transported somewhere else, by the power of Joseph. Rook thinks he's supposed to be imagining that he's somewhere really high now - in a very literal way. He suspects where he's supposed to be, is somewhere on that damn statue. The hand, or maybe the book?

"It's a Leap of Faith," she tells him, arms stretched out towards him. 

Rook looks off the end of the rock she's guided him onto, which is a good three inches off the ground.

"It's so high," he says. Because he can't fucking help himself. 

But Faith smiles and nods, like that's the whole point of this exercise.

"The Marshal's here too," Faith says, like that might encourage him. "Do you see him?" She points at an old backpack perched on the rock next to him, and Rook can't for the life of him decide if she put it there, or if she's just using bits of the world as her suggestive props. 

"Ah," Rook offers though, because this is all very surreal and insane, and he's afraid if he tries for any more, then he's going to start laughing.

"He has faith." She gestures at Marshal Backpack, smiling widely like he's already joined them. Which tells Rook that retrieving Burke might be more difficult than he expects. "And he's ready to prove it to you, to walk the path to Eden."

There's a pause, and then Faith very slowly dances around him, before leaning over, and gently pushing the backpack off the rock.

It falls very slowly, with the least amount of drama Rook has ever experienced.

It makes a _'flump'_ noise when it hits the floor.

Rook manages to turn his instinctive jerk of laughter into a shocked, semi-protesting noise. 

Faith smiles, encourages him towards the edge, like she's teaching a baby to walk. While she sways from side to side on her tiptoes, trying her best to be some sort of drug-induced hallucination version of herself. Rook has to wonder what he's supposed to be seeing right now. Religious imagery? Fairyland? Faith Seed as some sort of magical, transforming anime girl?

"Don't you want to come to Eden? Don't you want to join the Father? All you have to do is have faith."

She clearly wants Rook to hurl himself off of some imaginary high point, to prove himself to her, and he's not a particularly good actor but he's fallen off of things when he's drunk. He's pretty sure he can fake that. 

Faceplanting in the dirt it is. 

God, what is his life?

But Faith's laughing, and dancing around his sprawled body on bare feet, like Rook is everything she'd hoped he'd be.

"Walk the Path," she tells him, and she sounds overjoyed, and far too satisfied. Which he can't help but feel means that Joseph is going to be so happy with her that she can barely stand it. But then Faith's skipping off through the woods, laughing like she wants it to be the last thing Rook hears. Rook watches her go, as far as he can from his position. She really should find some boots, she's going to tread on something nasty.

After a few minutes, Rook hears a car door open and shut, and then the sound of someone slowly driving away. He gets up off of the floor and stands up straight, brushes off his pants.

So, yeah, that happened.

But he's learned that there's a good chance that he's immune to the Bliss. And if that's the only bone that the universe is going to throw him, then he's going to take it.


End file.
